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Added 4/13/08

4th Annual Joint SOS/SF Conference Scheduled for 2008

The 4th Annual Joint SOS/SF Conference will be held at the Tarrytown Hampton Inn (Westchester County, NY) Thursday to Sunday, October 9-12 (Columbus Day Weekend). The hotel is located at 200 Tarrytown Rd, Elmsford, NY. The closest airports are Westchester County Airport in White Plains, NY (about 10 miles away) and LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, NY (about 26 miles away). Currently there are 30 guest rooms being held at the discounted rate of $159/night until 9/8/08.

Further details as to the conference agenda, other events, registration information, travel information, and a list of alternate nearby lodging are forthcoming.

Anyone interested in presenting a paper should send a title and abstract to either John Hamill (hamillx@pacbell.net) or Bonner Cutting (bonnermiller@gmail.com)”

Added 4/13/08

Is Shakespeare Dead?

The delightful new video peformance by Keir Cutler Ph. D., dramatizes Mark Twain's classic anti-Stratfordian satire.

According to Cutler's own website, the video brings alive " Mark Twain's hilarious (1909) debunking of the myth that William Shakespeare wrote the works of Shakespeare. Listing the handful of established facts of Shakespeare's life, Twain ridicules the fantasy that an uneducated youth could have wandered into London and, with virtually none of the necessary skills, become the greatest author in English literature."

A "magnificent, witty performance!" - Winnipeg Sun

"Marshalls startling facts into an elegant and often tenacious argument that floats on a current of delicious irony."

- Montreal Gazette

Added 3/31/08

Anderson on Spring '08 Tour on Authorship Debate

Mark Anderson, author of the best-selling Shakespeare by Another Name, is again touring to promote his book and debate all-c0mers from the orthodox camp. Anderson will be in Houston (March 13-15), New York (March 27), Boston/Concord (May 30-June 1) and Las Vegas (July 11).

The final stop on this spring-summer tour is a debate (at Bally's Casino!) on the Shakespeare authorship question, where Anderson will take on Alan Nelson of U.C. Berkeley (arguing for the Stratfordian theory) and William Rubenstein of the University College of Wales (arguing that Elizabethan courtier Henry Neville was the Bard). The verbal tussle will be part of the "great debates" series at the weekend-long Freedom Fest conference.

Added 3/29/08

Hath Shakespeare Been a Tourist in Venice?

The March 25 issue of London Times Online carries notice of of a new book, Shakespeare in Venice, co-written by Shaul Bassi, a lecturer at Venice University, and Alberto Toso Fei . “Most scholars believe that what Shakespeare knew about Venice must have been the fruit of wide reading and his contact with Italians,” says Mr. Bassi. “But the local references —- implicit as well as explicit —- are so numerous they point to an alternative hypothesis: what if he did come here after all?”

According to London Times Rome correspondent Richard Owen, about a third of Shakespeare's works are based in Italy or make specific references to events and locations in Italy. However, "there is no concrete evidence that Shakespeare ever left England, and the most widely accepted theory is that he gleaned background information from Italian travellers and merchants, including Venetians, whose glass and other products were highly prized in Elizabethan England. "

Here at the Shakespeare Fellowship, we predict that the new book by Bassi and Fei is bound to incite further interest in the authorship question. Although there is no reason to believe that the bard of Avon ever left his native England, it is well known that de Vere toured Tuscany in 1575-76, and well attested tradition records that he was fond enough of Venice -- then the most cosmopolitan city in the world -- to build himself a house there.

John Aubrey probably exaggerates when he has the Earl remaining in Venice for seven years in humiliation after breaking wind in the presence of Elizabeth I, but it seems likely that he spent considerable time there during the decades after his 1575 junket.

Added 3/21/08

Authorship in the Princeton Alumni Review

Dr. Richard Waugaman, a noted Washington D.C. Psychoanalyst and member of the Shakespeare Fellowship, has landed a brief authorship article in the current issue of the online Princeton Alumni Weekly.

"I believe there are many sources of the skepticism, apathy, and even hostility I have encountered on my authorship quest," writes Waugaman.

We trust experts, and we should – usually. But literary studies lack a reliable methodology to evaluate....authorship claims. We assume that it's difference in science. But recall that Wegener had accumulated overwhelming evidence for his theory of continental drift by 1915. He was a mere geographer, though, not a geologist. Geologists – the specialists in that field – argued that there was no known conceivable explanation of how continental drift could have occurred, so they ridiculed Wegener's theory. But, by the mid-1960s, new information about plate tectonics provided the missing pieces of explanatory theory, and geologists now fully accept Wegener's 1915 proposal.

The situation is analogous when it comes to de Vere as Shakespeare. We have abundant evidence that he was regarded by his contemporaries as the best of the Elizabethan courtier poets; that a few of his contemporaries knew he wrote anonymously; that he sponsored theatrical companies most of his life; and that he was regarded as one of the best Elizabethan authors of comedies. There are hundreds of connections between the content of the plays and poems of Shakespeare and the documented facts of de Vere's life.

Added 3/8/08

Shakespeare Fellowship Trustees Respond to Egan Resignation

We note that Michael Egan today announced his resignation as editor of The Oxfordian. We commend his decision; we wish him well in all future endeavors; we hope he will continue to keep an open mind on the Shakespeare authorship question; and we hope to have the pleasure of his company at future conferences.

The Shakespeare Fellowship Board of Trustees

Added 2/17/08

Wall Street Journal: Official Shakespeare Story Wearing Thin

My, my, its been too long since we were able to update this news file, and much has naturally transpired in authorship land since last September. Fortunately, Mark Anderson has been more diligent, so if you want to fill in some of the gaps, try Mark's blog.

Meanwhile, a 2/16 Wall Street Journal, by Frances Taliaferro, covering two new orthodox biographies by Bill Bryson and Charles Nicholl, got us to to sit up and take notice. Taliaferro starts with a predictable quote from Bryson:

"For most of us ordinary folk, the authorship wars are irrelevant.. and 'Shakespeare' means interchangeably the man and his works." Think about it. I tried to, but I failed to grasp what the hell that means. As best as I can figure it out, it means "We are ducking the issue. We won't take a stand that could prove us wrong in the future. We won't fall for those nutty conspiracy theories. But we'll put the name 'Shakespeare' in quotation marks, so if it turns out to be someone else we can say 'Yes, we knew it all along.'"

Sound about right?

Added 9/20/07

Declaration of Reasonable Doubt Receives Another Boost

Time magazine has just published the best article yet on the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition's Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. Are we having fun yet?

Added 9/15/07

Toronto Star Savages Shakespeare Heretics

Since the BBC broke the story on international news about the signing of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt by Sir Derek Jacobi and Professor William Leahy on September 11, the fire and brimstone issuing from world headquarters of the Shakespeares-R-Us coalition has not ceased.

Today the otherwise civil and professional Lynda Hurst, writing in the Toronto Star, blasted Shakespeare heretics as participants in "the literary equivalent of the flat earth society, an irksome conspiracy theory that refuses to go away despite evidence to the contrary."

Apparently Ms. Hurst is an adherent of psychoanalysis, as well as a wannabe intellectual historian: "What really lies at the bottom of the controversy," writes the the Star correspondent without skipping a beat, "is this: Anti-Stratfordians do not believe the son of an illiterate glove maker...could possible have acquired the knowledge....that occurs in the plays."

Right. We've also never heard of Charles Chaplin or Robert Burns.

According to the presumably informed opinion of Ms. Hurst, Dr. Leahy "is shortly to risk academic scorn, if not suicide, for openly convening the first-ever graduate course on the subject at London's Brunel University."

But the Sun reporter's own astoundingly prejudicial statements were nothing compared to the erudition of Antoni Cimolino, the new general director of Ontario's Stratford Shakespeare festival: "You have to take a stupid pill to think [Shakespeare] didn't write the works. It's a very detailed conspiracy constructed out of 'airy nothing.'"

The liberties of being a Star reporter are a wonder to behold. Hurst, whose qualifications as a Shakespearean scholar are unknown to the Shakespeare Fellowship, was particularly incensed that Oxfordians do not accept the standard chronology of the authorship of the works: "The problematic fact that Oxford died in 1604," sneers Ms. Hurst, "before the appearance of Shakespeare's career topping King Lear and Macbeth would seem to constitute a largish fly in the ointment. But no. 'Death doesn't stop these people,' says [Professor] Leggatt. Oxford, it's been said, could have written the works then popped them into a bottom drawer for post-mortem publication. 'And Marlow didn't die either,' Leggatt laughs."

Given the way that final paragraph is constructed, so as to make it appear that the critical statement is a quote, but without any quotation marks around it, we aren't sure whether it is Professor Leggatt, or his earnest interlocutor, the ostensible journalist, who needs to take a remedial course in the rules of evidence and review the long-term disadvantages of habitually substituting straw men for real debate.

Here are the facts which were too onerous or inconvenient for Ms. Hurst's Star readers. At least three Shakespearean plays - All's Well That End's Well, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens, have no performance or publication history until 1623 when they appeared in print for the first time in the First Folio. By all available evidence, the author -- whoever he was -- in effect "popped them into a bottom drawer for post-mortem publication." So, if you strip away the ideological irony of The Star's formulation, you're left with the spectacle of someone trying to make fun of something that is demonstrably, on its face, true.

Way to go, Ms. Hurst.

This, of course, doesn't prove that Oxford wrote the works. It does prove that the very same logic being used by the Toronto Star to perpetuate public ridicule of Dr. Leahy, Sir Derek, and the other by-now over a thousand signatories of the Declaration, proves that the real author must have lived until after 1623 and therefore can't have been the bloke from Stratford, who died before these plays were mentioned by anyone, let alone acted or published. We realize, of course, that traditional Shakespeareans are unaccustomed to being held accountable for their own logic. But that's no excuse to lie in public.

The most fitting conclusion to this little report comes in the words of Tyrone Guthrie, the actor-producer who founded the Ontario Shakespeare Festival, of which the charming and informed Mr. Cimolino is the latest of many directors: "There is a theory, advanced by reputable scholars, seriously and, in my opinion, plausibly, that Shakespeare merely lent his name as a cover for the literary activities of another person." Stupid pills, indeed.

The Toronto Star should be ashamed of itself for pandering to the anti-intellectual emoting of such ironically uninformed "informants."

Added 9/11/07

Declaration of Reasonable Doubt

The BBC has broken the story:

Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, and Dr. William Leahy of London's Brunel University are among the most recent signatories of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition's Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about the orthodox view of Shakespeare. Jacobi, an honorary trustee of the Shakespeare Fellowship, is widely among the greatest Shakespearean actors of the 21st century. Mr Rylance, the former artistic director of London's Globe theatre, is the author of a recent play on the Shakespeare question, "I Am Shakespeare," currently touring England with much critical acclaim. Leahy is a Professor of English Renaissance/Early Modern studies at Brunel University, which recently announced a Master's Program in Shakespearean Authorship Studies.

Added 8/16/07

De Vere at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival

Like we said, policing a paradigm shift can be an exhausting job. Just as the Shakespearean establishment was about to heave a big sigh of relief that only 8 percent of its card carrying members were secret heretics, a bad case of the dreaded disease, Deveritis, has been detected at the Colorado Shakespeare festival. Denver Post critic Bob Bows, in a review of All's Well that Ends Well, identifies the author as one "Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, whose entire life is detailed in the canon."

"Once de Vere's life is illuminated," continues Bows, "we see that this play is filled with biographical details, beginning with Bertram's petulant refusal to consummate his forced marriage to Helena, continuing with 'step-sister' Helena's budding confusion over her relationship with Bertram, moving forward with Bertram's profligate behavior throughout, climaxing in the famous 'bed trick,' and culminating with the resurrection of Helena. "

While we're on the subject of de Vere in the theatre world, check out this Oregon Shakespeare Festival bio of leading many James Newcomb, "an avowed Oxfordian," not to mention one of the most talented new Shakespearean actors on the American scene.

Added 5/16/07

Shakespeare Fellowship President-elect McNeil interviewed in Boston Globe

The Shakespeare Fellowship is in the news again, this time in the form of a Boston Globe interview with the new SF President, Alex McNeil. McNeil is an attorney, court administrator, and television historian, author of the 1,251 page book, Total Television (Penguin, 1996). "Nobody likes to be challenged about core beliefs," says McNeil, 59, who lives in Newton. "But if you try to keep an open mind about it, you find that what is known about Shakespeare of Stratford doesn't fit with what we should expect of the author of the plays."

"If you start reading the plays, and connecting the dots," continues McNeil, "you conclude that all roads lead to Oxford," he says. "And it's only with great difficulty that you can surmise those roads lead to the Stratford man."

Don Aucoin's Globe story notes that McNeil's dedication to the authorship question "might surprise those who know him only as a mild-mannered TV historian." But when it comes to the authorship question, McNeil is no shrinking violet. He is especially bothered by the prevailing ignorance of the Oxford case in academic circles. "Oxfordians are getting kind of tired of being marginalized," he declares. "The standard reaction in academic circles is 'These people are nuts. Case closed.' . . . We're tired of being pushed around."

Added 5/8/07

Master's Progams in Authorship

While committed representatives of the orthodox view of Shakespearean authorship cling to the dogmatic mantra that "authorship does not exist," the world is changing around them. Not one, but two new Master's Programs in Shakespearean authorship studies have been announced in recent weeks, one in England at London's Brunel University, and the other at Concordia University, long the sponsor of the annual Authorship Studies Conference, in Portland, Ore. For further details on the Brunel Program, please visit the website.

Added 5/1/07

Anne Barton on Authorship in the New York Review of Books

Things are heating up in authorship land. Professor Anne Barton, the distinguished Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge known (among other things) for her illuminating introductions to several plays in the Riverside edition of the Collected Works (my personal favorite being the one to Measure for Measure), leads off her March 29 review of Ron Rosenbaum's The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups with a quote from Logan Pearsall Smith's, On Reading Shakespeare. The quote is along the lines of, "aren't those silly anti-Stratfordians a riot?" Here's how Barton makes use of Smith's quote:

the cries of the distracted inhabitants sometimes reach us from the dark realm of Shakespearean interpretation. We hear the bleating of idiot adorers and the eternal swish of their whitewash brushes; we hear the squeals of the idealists...; the war-cries of the Foli-olators and Disintegrators as they rush upon each other and even wilder battle cries than these (for it is impossible to exaggerate their strangeness) will reach our ears. For listen!

Smith then reminded his readers of the cries emitted by the followers of "no less than five ghostly resurrected Elizabethan Earls"; of those heard from the supporters of Derby, Oxford, Rutland, and other claimants to be the true author of the man from Stratford's plays; of the Pembrokians and Southamptonians quarreling vociferously over the identity of the young man addressed in the Sonnets; and finally, "as the wind shifts, we hear the ululations of those vaster herds of Baconian believers, as they plunge squeaking down the Gadarene slope of their delusion."

It couldn't it be more obvious, could it? To Smith the anti-Stratfordians are buffoons and ignorami, "idiot adorers" and ulutating pigs preparing mass suicide by leaping of the cliff of reason in the sea of Galilee. If not contempt, they at least deserve our pity. But wait! What, you may ask, does Smith have to say about the orthodox Shakespearean establishment for which Professor Barton is here functioning as public apologist? Listen:

Can these things be? [i.e., the deification of Shakespeare]. Or are we imposed upon, hocussed, and bamboozled, the dupes of a gigantic Brockenspectre of make-believe and mist, and victims as Tolstoy so impressively maintained, of a great collective hallucination, one of those crazes and epidemic manias, like the belief in witches or in the approaching end of the world, by which whole nations and whole ages have often been obsessed? Even the high priests of this established Shakespeare worship seem to betray, now and then, an uneasy consciousness of something equivocal about the object of their devotion; of things to be hushed up, and the need of whitewash.

(7)

Hmm... "an uneasy consciousness of...things to be hushed up, and the need of whitewash." Now, there's a phrase to ponder. One doesn't even need a classical education to understand the symbolism.

Wouldn't Smith be surprised to learn how his own words would one day be used to tint up the latest batch of whitewash? Then again, maybe he wouldn't. He strikes us as someone quite capable of maintaining his intellectual independence, and not a bit naive about the real world. Certainly, contrary to the impression the casual reader of Barton's review might leave with, Smith was no apologist for the orthodox view of authorship.

Added 4/29/07

Relax: Professors Believe in Him

When New York Times culture desk editor William Niederkorn, who has written for the Times on Shakespearean topics including the authorship question at least since 2002, initiated an online survey for academicians to measure their views on authorship last month, some of the respondents were practically apoplectic that anyone would bother to ask them about a subject they know doesn't exist. Now that the results are out, the professors can heave a sigh of relief. Or can they? The survey of 265 professors who teach Shakespeare in English departments of public and private four years colleges and universities, selected randomly, reveals that 82% say that there is no reason to question the traditional account of authorship. Only 11% say there is "possibly good reason" to question authorship, while a measly 6% say there is good reason to do so. Sounds like a slam dunk for the "stubborn bear, authority," doesn't it?

But wait. It wasn't that many years ago when, according to Caltech Professor Jenijoy La Belle, in her 1994 "Happy Birthday William" column in the Los Angeles Times, assured us that 99.99% of all Shakespearean professors knew that anyone who questioned Shakespeare's authorship was a "noodle" -- a word apparently used in some English departments to signify an "errant addle-patted miscreant." If Labelle's statistic is valid (and, after all, as a reputable Shakespearean scholar, she must have known what she was talking about, right?), that means that the decline in support for the traditional view of authorship within English departments is nothing short of precipitous. Alternatively, hiring committees have for over a decade done a pisspoor job of keeping the loonies out of the institutions.

Added 4/23/2007

SAC Petition Gathers Steam

Claremont, California, April 23, 2007 – Today, on the 391 st anniversary of the death of Stratford's Mr. William “Shakspere,” generally regarded as the author of the works of William “Shakespeare,” a new organization – the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC) – posted on its website the names of 132 signers of its “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.” The signatures were gathered just in the last two weeks on the group's website. The SAC says it plans to continue operating the website, gathering and posting names of signatories, through April 23, 2016, the 400 th anniversary of the death of Mr. William “Shakspere” of Stratford.

The list includes, most notably, prominent Shakespearean actors Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, former artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, plus Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, a Shakespeare lover who is widely regarded by his peers as perhaps the world's leading expert on creativity and genius. Simonton reveres Shakespeare, but can't accept the traditional attribution to the man from Stratford. Also named on the list is Charles Champlin, former Arts Critic Emeritus at the Los Angeles Times.

The 132 declaration signers include 34 current or former college and university faculty members, 34 people with various types of doctoral degrees, and another 31 people with various master's degrees. “This is a man bites dog story,” said SAC chairman John Shahan, principal author of the declaration. “Orthodox Shakespeare scholars would have the public believe that only deranged people in isolated fringe groups question the identity of William Shakespeare. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Added 4/21/07

Beauclerk to Resume Lecturing on Authorship

Charles Beauclerk, the descendent of both Edward de Vere and Nell Gwynne who during the 1990s provoked considerable interest in the Oxfordian theory on his U.S. speaking tour, has thrown his hat back into the ring. During the years since Beauclerk's U.S. tour, he completed a critically acclaimed biography of Gwyn, Nell Gwyne: Mistress to a Queene (2005 Grove Atlantic): "Nell Gwyn is Charles Beauclerk's literary debut and it has about it a humanity, empathy and freshness of which his subject would undoubtedly approve... His grasp of Restoration literature and culture is impressive and there is nothing he doesn't know about the politics," raved the Sunday Telegraph. Having won critical accolades for his 2005 biography of Gwynne Beauclerk is now working on a new book about de Vere.

Added 4/19/07

Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC) launches "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt"

A new organization, spearheaded by Southern California Shakespeare skeptics John Shahan, Virginia Renner (former head of Reader Services at the prestigious Huntington Library), and many others, has launched a "declaration of reasonable doubt" signature pledge drive. The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition kicked off the drive at UCLA's Geffen playhouse April 14, and plans to gather thousands of signatures in support of its statement of skepticism over the traditional view of Shakespearean authorship: " We have nothing against the man from Stratford-on-Avon," announced the group, "but we doubt that he was the author of the works. Our goal is to legitimize the issue in academia so students, teachers and professors can feel free to pursue it. This is necessary because the issue is widely viewed as settled in academia and is treated as a taboo subject. We believe that an open-minded examination of the evidence shows that the issue should be taken seriously. Your signature on the declaration will help us make the case that there is reasonable doubt about the author."

Added 4/18/07

Anderson to Lecture In Taiwan

Mark Anderson, author of the acclaimed Gotham Books title, "Shakespeare" By Another Name, recently reprinted in paperback, has been invited to lecture on the authorship question at Tamkang University , outside of Taipei. Anderson's three lectures will focus on Edward de Vere, the authorship question, and the evidence for de Vere's authorship contained in his book. As Anderson's blog suggests, the Taipei bookings are a hint of the potentially explosive interest in the authorship question, worldwide: " if Shakespeare is an extraordinarily popular author around the world (as he most certainly is ), then ultimately the Shakespeare authorship problem—and the Oxfordian solution to it—will also command a global reach."

Added 4/11/07

Shakespeare Fellowship Announces 2007-8 Essay Contest

The Shakespeare Fellowship has announced the resumption of its annual Shakespeare Authorship essay contest for high school students. Once again, cash prizes totalling $1350 will be awarded to the top six essays submitted by High School students from around the world. The deadline for the 2007-8 essay cycle will be January 15, 2008.

Added 3/31/07

Authorship in The Washington Post

The March 18 issue of the Washington Post Outlook section contains dueling essays on the authorship question by Shakespeare Fellowship Vice-President Roger Stritmatter, Assistant Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University in Baltimore, and Dr. Stanley Wells, co-editor (with Professor Gary Taylor) of the Oxford University edition of the Collected Works, Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford, and Emeritus Professor of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham.

Added 8/24/06

Shapiro to Write Authorship Book

James Shapiro, Columbia University Professor and author of the much- acclaimed minimalist bardography, 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare has not only noticed the authorship question (see the May 15 News Note Below) – he even plans to write a book about it. Well, sort of, anyway.

A June 18 interview of Shapiro by Jasper Gerard in the Sunday Times reports that "for his next odyssey, Shapiro intends to examine why so many people do not believe that Shakespeare wrote, well, Shakespeare: 'People I respect are fascinated by this: Sigmund Freud and Henry James both believed it was someone else.' . . . He admits that this populist project alarms academics, who fear a Da Vinci Code-style thriller. 'My friends tell me I am going over to the dark side,' he laughs, 'but I doubt I am going to change my mind [about Shakespeare's identity]'. "

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature , the quarterly journal of the Northwest chapter of the Modern Language Association, the leading academic organization of literary scholars in North America, has some articles that Shapiro may want to check out if he really wants to understand what is behind the current authorship ferment. In “ What's In a Name? Everything, Apparently, ” Shakespeare Fellowship Vice-President for Outreach and Education Roger Stritmatter outlines the shape of the paradigm shift.

That essay is complemented by an in depth review of several current authorship books in the same issue, from the pen of Michael Delahoyde, Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, Shakespeare Fellowship member, and editor of the Rocky Mountain Review. Delahoyde's “Recent Publications in Oxfordian Studies,” covers Great Oxford : Essays on the Life and Work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , 1550-1604 , edited by Richard Malim; and Hank Whittemore's, The Monument , and Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare" By Another Name.

Added 5/15/06

Oxford at the SAA, But Not the New York Review of Books

Its been an exciting few months. The Earl of Oxford put in a cameo appearance in the plenary session of the Shakespeare Association of America's 34th annual conference in Philadelphia April 12, when panelists made several jests about his precocious educational record.

But somehow Anne Barton, in this May 11 New York Review of Books survey of new Shakespeare biographies, managed to omit Mark Anderson's book and perpetuate the pretense that the Oxford heresy is just one among many. She is, on the other hand, candid enough to admit that Shakespeareans have frequent recourse to the belief of John Updike that “biographies are really just novels with indexes.” Barton admits that the epigram has a special significance for the bardographer: “That seems especially true with lives of Shakespeare.”

This sobering admission does not restrain the reviewer from singling out James Shapiro's A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 as the cream of 2005 Shakespeare biographies. To Barton, Shapiro “genuinely illuminates the plays and the man that wrote them.”

How does it do this, when so many others have failed? “Shapiro is particularly fine in his detailed account of how the timbers of the Shoreditch theatre were salvaged and stored (not, as often claimed, ferried at once across the Thames ) and just what kind of carpentry and weather conditions were required for reusing them for the Globe.”

S'wot? How does that “illuminate the plays and the man who wrote them”?

Meanwhile, Shapiro himself has publicly acknowledged in a May 15 article in the Daily Telegraph online that “the past year has been a good one for the anti-Stratfordians: The Oxfordian, the journal of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, attracted attention with the publication of Mark Anderson's Shakespeare by Another Name while the British media proclaimed the arrival of a fresh contender, Sir Henry Neville, proposed by Brenda James and William Rubenstein (sic) in their book The Truth Will Out .” For a review of this preposterously incompetent book, visit our reviews section.

Right on cue, Terry Ross , returning to the authorship debate after an extended holiday, took Shapiro to task for going soft on the heretics by acknowledging that 2005 was a bonanza year. According to Ross, “the growing number of antistratfordian ‘contenders' makes the case for each one even weaker, if such a thing is possible.” Ross missed the April 20-23 10th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference , where Lynne Kositsky politely demolished Rubinstein's credibility. Anyone who has followed the authorship question as a topic in intellectual history is aware that for many decades (at least since 1984, if not 1920), there has been no serious alternative to the Oxford case.

Added 5/11/06

New York Review of Books: All the Books About Shakespeare....Except the Most Important One

A May 11 New York Times Book Review essay by Anne Barton that surveys contemporary Shakespearean biographies inadvertently reveals the ingrained prejudice of contemporary scholars by entirely omitting mention of Mark Anderson's Shakespeare By Another Name (Gotham 2005), while commenting at length on the “unremitting efforts by the anti-Stratfordians to demonstrate that an impartial scrutiny of the career of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, or some other aristocrat— Sir Henry Neville and Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, have joined the usual list of suspects within recent months—reveals him or her to be the true but craftily hidden author of plays and poems supposedly incomprehensible as the work of a lowly provincial grammar school boy turned professional actor.”

Included in the review are James Shapiro's AYear in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599; Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance by Richard Wilson (Manchester University); Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare by Clare Asquith, a study of the bard's alleged Catholic recusancy; Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd; and That Man Shakespeare: Icon of Modern Culture by David Ellis (Helm Information).

 Unremitting? You betcha!

Added 10/30/05

Miller Lite at the New York Times

You'd think the New York Times would have learned something from the Judith Miller fiasco about hiring reporters who are more interested in cozying up to powerful special interests than they are in covering the facts of the story. But as so often happens in a major institution like the Times, the hard lessons learned in one cubicle are being ignored in the next one.

" Looking at Shakespeare, in 3 Different Ways" is the headline of Charles McGrath's October 29 article, which begins by segregating Shakespearean scholarship into two types, one originating in the ivory tower, another "the grassy knoll."

" If we actually discovered something new about Shakespeare, it might put an end to an entire publishing industry," opines the original and insightful Mr. McGrath.

Actually, of course, the pace of new discoveries about Shakespeare -- none of them mentioned in McGrath's article, since they so often hail from the forbidden knoll-- has been nothing short of frenetic for more than a decade now. Many of the critical new discoveries about the bard were covered in William Niederkorn's Feb. 10 2001 New York Times article, and subsequent NYT articles by Niederkorn.

It's a pity that Mr. McGrath was so rushed by his deadline that he wasn't even able to read what the Times itself had written about new developments in Shakespearean studies. Had he done so, he might have realized that the grassy knoll is a boon to smart publishers. But in the atmosphere of slovenly disrespect for independent intellectual judgement so characteristic of today's media culture, McGrath can only fear the catastrophic consequences of new discovery.

Regretably, the first casualty in the Stratfordian war on common sense and intellectual integrity is language itself. As Mark K. Anderson comments: McGrath's "headline is certainly true... if, that is, one uses the word “Different” as another way of saying “Extremely Similar.” How nice for Mr. McGrath that evidently words don't really have to mean anything. A writer can just say stuff! Who cares if it makes any sense?"

We nominate Mr. McGrath for a new journalistic award: The New York Times Miller Lite Award.

Added 10/15/05

Times Literary Supplement Enforces Silence, Endorses A Lie

On August 30 we reported on the Times Literary Supplement's attack on authorship skepticism, which came in the form of a review by Professor Brian Vickers which seemed to endorse the notion, first published in Scott McCrea's offensive screed, The Case For Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question (Praeger 2005), of comparing authorship skeptics to holocaust deniers (Stephen Greenblatt hopped on the bandwagon a few weeks later).

When he wasn't throwing ideological stones at the heretics, Vickers raised the issue of the alleged date of the Tempest, criticizing contributors to Great Oxford for daring to suggest that leading Tempest editors are backing away from supporting the play's alleged dependence on the Strachey letter. Regretably, Vickers seems to be unaware that Tempest editors such as David Lindley, Barbara Mowat, and William Sherman have in fact raised the very doubts he seemed intent to dispel.

A highly placed Shakespeare scholar (who wished to remain anonymous) confirmed this trend: "Tempest editors have recently pulled back from making strong claims for Shakespeare's knowledge of the Strachey material in manuscript."

This will be news not only to Professor Vickers, who excoriates Oxfordian scholars for similar statements, but also to readers of the Times Literary Supplement who, as a result of an apparent TLS policy against informing their readers when Shakespeare heretics are correct, will not read the following letter, sent to TLS August 28:

Sir:

It is disconcerting to discover that Brian Vickers' definition of scholarship is so specialized that he does not understand the damage done to his own discipline of Shakespearean studies by such attacks on critical diversity as those of Mr. McCrea in his Praeger imprint. And although it is difficult in a few lines to redress the misconceptions of a reviewer who mistakes the notion that “all conspiracy theories are alike” for a significant point of departure in historical scholarship, Professor Vickers' confidence in the Bermuda pamphlets as a touchstone for dating The Tempest does require brief comment.

Bullough's own student Kenneth Muir, in The Sources of Shakespeare's Plays, had already argued by 1978 that “the extent of the verbal echoes of [the Bermuda] pamphlets has been exaggerated” (280). This view, or something very like it, has subsequently been endorsed by several scholars of The Tempest, among them Barbara Mowat, William Sherman, and David Lindley. Indeed, it is quite clear that since Muir, the doubts about the relevance of the Bermuda pamphlets as a criterion for dating the play have grown exponentially: Lindley, editor of the play's New Cambridge edition, explained the current view of many in a 2001 exchange on the Shaksper listerve, writing that while “the Strachey letter is a possible source for The Tempest, it is not a necessary source, in the way that Ovid or Montaigne both are” (emphasis original). Instead, over the years since Muir, scholars have suggested that the alleged correspondences between the Bermuda pamphlets and Shakespeare's play result from the author's familiarity with influential source texts such as Erasmus' "The Shipwreck," Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and -- most important -- Richard Eden's Decades of the New World (1550).

Professor Vickers fails to acknowledge this trend away from the Bermuda pamphlets, but it is by no means unscholarly to suggest that The Tempest did not rely on them and was perhaps not composed as late as Professor Bullough and many others once supposed. In fact, such a revision now seems inevitable, since performance data can only establish a date before which, and many now question the traditional view that the Bermuda pamphlets left a distinctive influence on the play. On the other hand, because the trend towards an earlier date of The Tempest has yet to reach a logical conclusion, many find themselves in a state of cognitive transition with respect to matters of both evidence and interpretation, and it is therefore not difficult to perpetuate the illusion of traditional unanimity where none in fact exists. It would seem that under these circumstances the scholar should promote dialogue with skeptics of the traditional chronology and preserve an open mind about where the evidence might lead him.

Apparently, TLS was concerned that some readers might get the wrong idea. Vickers portrays the Oxfordians as unscholarly nitwits, and apparently TLS editors wanted their readers to retain that image without contradiction: though they found space for an amusing letter written at the expense of the Baconians, the publication never did acknowledge the extent of the unfairness and inaccuracy of Professor Vicker's Jeremiad.

Added 9/05/05

Greenblatt Vrs. The New York Times

There comes a point in the history of the development of any new idea when the protagonists of what is euphemistically known as the “old guard,” consciously or unconsciously, paradoxically concede defeat, in what could be their finest hour, by adopting a stance towards their critics which reveals a fundamental failing of both morality and method.

In the history of the Shakespearean question, that pivotal moment arrived in Stephen Greenblatt's September 4 salvo against the anti-Stratfordians in response to William Niederkorn's critical review of his recent biography, Will in the World, and endorsement of Mark Anderson's Oxfordian biography, “Shakespeare” By Another Name.

Rather than respond to the substance of Niederkorn's critique, Greenblatt's letter is a wholesale assault on the pedagogical movement to open the classroom to discussions of authorship, so that students can themselves explore the plausibility and implications of alternative authorship scenarios. This, assures Professor Greenblatt, is “exactly equivalent to current arguments that ‘intelligent design' be taught alongside evolution.”

“Exact equivalence” is a difficult proposition to establish in the humanities, but leaving aside that little touch of epistemic dogma, we wondered how the good Professor Greenblatt could possibly hope to establish a legitimate comparison between the two controversies.

And then it hit us. The first sentence of Greenblatt's own Will in the World begins like this: “ Let us imagine that Shakespeare found himself from boyhood fascinated by language….” (our italics).

What if your biology textbook began, “Let us imagine young fish finding themselves fascinated by the land near shallow waters. Through the exercise of will power they eventually transform their young flippers into mature feet, beginning the ascent which led to full bipedalism and the triumph of Homo sapiens. The fossil record proves the truth of this theory. Only malcontents and followers of the late Charles Darwin continue to defy the obvious."

One can only hope that a science founded on this kind of unexamined faith in "will power" and relentless antagonism towards alternative perspectives, would inspire rational criticism. Hopefully, a movement for reform, encouraging both model building and empirical investigation, would eventually sponsor a new paradigm, based on the common sense perception that will power does not transform flippers into feet any more than it produces, sans education, experience and sheer grit, great literary works.

Whether Professor Greenblatt understands it or not, this is exactly what has been happening, largely outside traditional academic circles, in the eighty-five years since J. T. Looney published "Shakespeare" Identified.

It is ironic but also predictable that few orthodox scholars of note have shown an inclination to keep themselves apprised of the development of the diverse scholarship which has responded to the theory since Looney's original articulation.

Greenblatt's analogy to advocates of intelligent design may be a convenient means to deflect the criticisms of Niederkorn and a host of other readers who find Greenblatt's book unpersuasive. As such it is objectionable chiefly because of its astonishing absence of self awareness. Many besides Mr. Niederkorn have felt that Greenblatt's own speculative methodologies as a biographer are indefensible – and anyone who has read Greenblatt's book with an ounce of skepticism should recognize that he is not in any position to lead an orthodox vangaurd against the nonconforming huns and visigoths of Shakespearean studies.

More troubling, and indicative of a failing deeper than any seen in his book, is Greenblatt's ready recourse to offensive analogies such as likening anti-Stratfordians to “Holocaust deniers.” In the middle ages, and up through the Renaissance, powerful interests (including Universities such as Harvard) used inquisition to stamp out heresy. In the modern world, it seems, more efficient devices have been invented.

Here at the Shakespeare Fellowship, we say a Kaddish for the dead.

Added 9/01/05

Battling Bards, Take Two: Elliott Responds to Egan

After a suitable delay, Professor Ward Elliott has responded to Michael Egan's attempt to collect the 1000 pounds sterling for having proven that the obscure Elizabethan play, Woodstock , also known as I Richard II , is a work of the young “Shakespeare.” (see the entry for 8/9 below).   The reply tempts us to quote Gertrude's exhortation to Polonius: “more matter and less art!”

But even the matter which is supplied in Elliott's post betrays an astounding absence of common sense. “It's not all that hard to tell which plays are considered clearly Shakespeare's,” opines Elliott. “which are not, and which are debatable.” One wonders in that case why Elliott's own computer disagrees with the editors of the Riverside Shakespeare about Edward III . But let's not let any facts get in the way of our computerized presuppositions.

Regarding Woodstock, whatever Professor Elliott's computer may tell him, one can scarcely disagree with the well founded conviction of Keith Hopkins, for whom it is

"astonishing... that the anonymity of Woodstock has been so long maintained when the claims for Shakespeare's authorship which are strong< have> received such relatively little critical attention. I would respectfully agree therefore with Michael Egan's view that we are dealing here with an early play that does link with Richard II and can be attributed with reasonable confidence to Shakespeare. "

Added 8/30/05

New York Times Vrs. Times Literary Supplement

Within less than two weeks major publications on opposite sides of the Atlantic have published reviews of recent Shakespearean books which portray radically different perspectives on the authorship question.

In today's New York Times William Niederkorn contrasts Mark Anderson's “Shakespeare” By Another Name with Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World (2004), in a review which leads with the comment that “ The controversy over who wrote Shakespeare's works has reached a turning point of sorts. A new biography of the Earl of Oxford improves on the unorthodox argument that he was Shakespeare, while fantasy has now been firmly established as a primary tool of other, more traditional Shakespeare studies.”

But on the other side of the pond, in an August 17 Times Literary Supplement review of four books on authorship by Brian Vickers, Chair of English Language and Literature at the Centre for Renaissance Studies, Zurich , fantasy still reigns. Vickers, reviewing Great Oxford, The Case for Shakespeare, Peter Dawkins' The Shakespeare Enigma, and a Marlovian edition of Hamlet edited by Alex Jack, delivers a what Niederkorn describes as a" fire-and-brimstone academic sermon attacking the Shakespeare-must-have-been-someone-else scholars" and denouncing anti-Stratfordians as blinkered conspiracy theorists.

Vicker's review is headlined, "Why Not Shakespeare?" One might answer the question from the refreshingly balanced review of Charlton Ogburn's Mysterious William Shakespeare published by the Folger Library's Shakespeare Quarterly eighteen years ago: "Doubts about Shakespeare came early and grew rapidly. They have a simple and direct plausibility. The plausibility has been reinforced by the tone and methods by which traditional scholarship has responded to the doubts...."

Plus ça change ... plus c'est la même chose.

Added 8/20/05

McFarland Set to Publish De Vere as Shakespeare

Its getting harder and harder to keep up with the Oxfordian news. Already 2004-05 has seen the publication of Great Oxford, and Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare" By Another Name. Now Mcfarland, a leading publisher of books for the academic and scholarly market, is set to release yet another Oxfordian book, De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon, by William Farina, with an introduction by Felicia Londré, co-author of the Shakespeare Festival Guide, Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and sometime dramaturg for the Missouri Shakespeare Fesival. Congratulations, Mr. Farina.

Added 8/18/05

Anderson Book Generates Reviews, Pro, Con, and Honest Ostrich

The reviews have started to come in, but before we deal with them, here's the nifty new banner for Anderson's website:

Added 8/12/05

English Oxfordians Honor 400th Anniversary of de Vere's Death

Great Oxford, published by Parapress, honors the quatercentenary of the death of Edward de Vere (June 2004). Edited by Richard Malim, the 39 essays of the volume by English and Italian Oxfordians are introduced with an essay by Shakespearean actor and Shakespeare Fellowship Trustee emeritus Sir Derek Jacobi: "This book justifies and reinforces the contention that the plays were written from an aristocratic perspective....I would commend this collection as full of enlightened and reasoned research in the question to provide material for rational and honest debate." Highly recommended.

Added 8/9/05

Mike Egan's Missing 1,000 Pounds Sterling

In recent years nobody has played the game of defending Will Shakspere from the infidels with quite the zeal, or so succesfully twisted the news media around his little finger with publicity stunts, as Professor Ward Elliott, the Claremont McKenna political scientist turned computer Stylometrician.

Now it seems that former University of Massachusetts English Professor Michael Egan (now scholar-in-residence at Brigham Young University in Honolulu), who has for several years quietly been studying and writing about the obscure Elizabethan play, Woodstock , has turned the tables on Elliott. Woodstock is a drama which had been "in the air" at Umass Amherst since the Hampshire Shakespeare Company resurrected and produced the play at the urging of then-PhD candidate Roger Stritmatter in 1999. Mark Anderson, then writing for the Hampshire Valley Advocate, noted that the play "contains moments of genius, transcendent wit and youthful exuberance that would recommend this production to any lover of historical -- and literary -- mysteries."

In an August 9 post to the Shakespere listserve, a follow up to this post of July 28, Egan reports that “Over the years" Elliott “has issued a challenge, recently repeated here, the substance of which is that he will pay 1000 British pounds to anyone able to prove that any anonymous Elizabethan play deemed non-Shakespeare by stylometry and himself is in fact by Shakespeare."

Now it seems that Elliott has gone missing just when Egan came to collect his prize money.

"On 28 July (SHK 16.1251 Shakespeare by the Numbers) I accepted this challenge in the following form: if Elliott could refute my non-stylometric evidence and show that the anonymous Elizabethan play Richard II, Part One (also known as Woodstock ) is not by Shakespeare, I would pay him his one thousand pounds. But if he could not, he would write me a check for the equivalent amount. My evidence is detailed in The Tragedy of Richard II, Part One: A Newly Authenticated Play by Shakespeare (Edwin Melllen Press, 2005, forthcoming).

It is now two weeks later and the silence from the direction of Claremont Mackenna College has been deafening. Obviously the man is not showing up.”

“… It's time” concludes Egan, “to call the stylomeretricious bluff.”

We'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate both Professor Egan and Edwin Mellen Press for publishing what is sure to be an important contribution to Renaissance literary studies.

Finally, however, we have a challenge of our own for Professor Egan: To win a free membership in the Shakespeare Fellowship, using the methodology employed by the late William Plumer Fowler in Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters , prove to us that Edward de Vere did not write Woodstock .

Added 8/7/05

2004 Shakespeare Yearbook Lends Support to Early Play Chronology

Volume 14 of the Shakespeare Yearbook published by Edwin Mellen Press features a number of impressive articles, including a remarkable study by Penny McCarthy, "Some Quises and Quems: Shakespeare's True Debt to Nashe." Dr. McCarthy's article urges the need to revise longstanding beliefs that the copious intertextuality between Nashe and Shakespeare is primarily the result of Shakespeare's spongelike absorption of Nashe. Instead, argues McCarthy, Nashe was engaged in "a surprisingly single-minded program to promote the contemporary playright and sonneteer whom he admired above all" (176).

The implications of McCarthy's argument for Shakespearean studies are profound in at least two respects.

First, chronology: if Nashe is indeed responding to Shakespeare in his series of pamphlets, the latest of which is dated 1596, then the mid/late 1590s dates of several Shakespearean plays are too late by half a decade or more. By McCarthy's reckoning this list would include Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, I and II Henry IV, Love's Labour's Lost, and quite possibly many more. Striking at the foundations of the orthodox chronological house of cards, McCarthy points out that “there is no reason why Shakespeare's plays should have been originally written close to the first record of their existence” (176).

Second, identity: McCarthy sees Shakespeare as the vital center of Nashe's literary world, an object of both reverence and friendly satire. She goes so far as to argue (187) that Nashe's “Master Apis Lapis” in the 1592 dedication to Strange News , whom Charles Wisner Barrell in 1944 identified convincingly was Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford, was Shakespeare.

Congratulations, Professor McCarthy: you just pinned the tail on the donkey.

Added 6/11/05

Anderson Gotham book set for release August 2005

The most important new book on Oxford's authorship in some years, Mark K. Anderson's Shakespeare By Another Name, will be released by Gotham Press, a division of Penguin books, this August.

Added 5/22/05

Authorship Question Heats Up With Three New Titles

A new offering from Greenwood Press, The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question, by Scott McCrea, sheds more heat than light on the authorship question. McCrea, identified on the book's dustjacket as "on the faculty of the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film" at SUNY Purchase, is a relative newcomer to the authorship question whose first contribution to the discourse was a December 2002 Skeptic magazine article, answered by Diana Price (vol. 11:3, 2005).

Bertram Feilds, copyright attorney and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, has weighed in with a generic anti-Stratfordian work, Players , published by ReganBooks, an imprint of Harper Collins.

Meanwhile in England, Great Oxford: Essays on the Life and Work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, 1550-1604 (Parapress 21004), with a forward by Shakespeare Fellowship Honorary Lifetime Trustee Sir Derek Jacobi, advances the case for Oxford's authorship. Look for review and further commentary on this site.

Added 3/31/05

Shakespeare Fellowship Announces Winner of Annual Essay Contest

The Board of Trustees of the Shakespeare Fellowship has announced that the 2005 essay contest first prize of $600 goes to Jamie Bence, from Santa Monica CA, for her essay, "Shakespeare and the Education of Women." Prizes were also awarded to the following entrants: Nicholas Broussard (2nd place), Jennifer Hopkins, "The Character of Lord Burghley" (3rd place), Amanda Fujiki, "O God, That I Were a Man," Genna Braverman, and Karen Lee, "Women's Education, Role, Complexity" (honorable mentions).

Added 3/6/05

Emmerich to Start Production on Soul of the Age

Reuter's New Agency, in a dispatch dated February 22, announces that Roland Emmerich has taken the next steps towards making his dream of of a feature film about Oxford as Shakespeare a cinematic reality. As reported by Reuters, Emmerichwants to shed his reputation for making special-effects blockbusters by shooting "more difficult, socially relevant" films, he said Wednesday.

"I'm older now; I want to do other things," the German-born director said during a news conference at the Berlin Film Festival where he is president of the Competition jury. "'The Day After Tomorrow' was the first step. I did what I always do, but for the first time, there was a message, as well."

As previously reported in our own loca Shakespeare Fellowshipl NEWs, Emmerich's new project, "Soul of the Age," is a political thriller set in Elizabethan England that explores the controversial theory that William Shakespeare was not the author of his famous plays.

"I am convinced that the William Shakespeare we know was a fraud," Emmerich said, "that he almost certainly did not write the Shakespeare plays." He plans to begin shooting "Soul" in England in the fall with an all-British cast.

"This will be a chance for me to show people I can work with actors, that I can direct drama," he said.

Emmerich said he will use substantial special effects in the film -- including re-creating the entire city of London in the 17th century.

We can't wait.

Added 2/22/05

Shakespeare Fellowship to Sponsor Joint Conference with the Shakespeare Oxford Society

Two Major Pro-Shakespeare Organizations to Sponsor Joint Conference in Ashland, OR, September 29-October 2, 2005

The presidents of the Shakespeare-Oxford Society and the Shakespeare Fellowship issue joint statement announcing the Ashland conference

Joint Statement from Lynne Kositsky (President – Shakespeare Fellowship) and James Sherwood (President – Shakespeare-Oxford Society)

February 21, 2005

We are delighted to announce that our two pro-Shakespeare organizations will sponsor our first-ever joint conference in Ashland, OR, September 29-October 2, 2005.

We believe the venue in Ashland -- home of the world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) -- offers a perfect location for our joint conference. The conference will bring together a wide spectrum of speakers and participants to explore the exciting and important issues surrounding the authorship of the plays and poems of William Shakespeare.

We ask all Shakespeare lovers who are interested in the authorship question to mark their calendars for September 29-October 2, 2005. We believe this joint conference will prove to be a milestone event in celebrating the immortal works of Shakespeare, while opening many eyes with regard to the identity of the true author.

We hope to see all lovers of Shakespeare at our joint conference in Ashland.

To register for the joint Ashland Conference please see details here.

Added 2/16/05

Washington State University Offers Full Semester Course on Edward De Vere

First there was Concordia University's Shakespeare Authorship Conference; now Washington State University Professor Dr. Michael Delahoyde, a Shakespeare Fellowship member and regular contributor to our discussion forum, has started a regular Honors Course (Honors 440) on the authorship question. "I am reasonably certain," writes Delahoyde in his online course description, "this is the first time ever such a course has been offered anywhere at any time on earth: a semester of researching and studying the multi-disciplinary works of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) and his life at Queen Elizabeth's court."

Like many other English instructors who have introducted students to the authorship question, Delahoyde reports an explosive intellectual energy is unleashed when students are invited to consider the authorship question with open minds: "several students stay after class every day wanting to know more about Oxford's life and tackling their own research projects with detective zeal." Congratulations, Professor Delahoyde!

Added 2/13/05

Oxford in Psychiatry Magazine

The fall 2003 issue (66:3) of Psychiatry magazine includes prominent mention of the authorship question in an article by Richard M. Waugaman, "Unconscious Communication and Literature." The article is an extended response to an essay by Dinko Podrug on the use of Hamlet to teach psychoanalytic technique. In the course of discussing the Podrug article, Waugaman remarks that

Some scholars, such as Peter Gay, have found it "embarrassing" that Freud held the "eccentric" notion that the works attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604). Freud's convictions on this point were even challenged by his translater and former analysand, James Strachey, who asked that Freud, in the English translations of his works, reconsidering including the statement from his original German publication that he no longer believed Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him....More recently, Bloom (1994) did his part to mock Freud's opinion about de Vere's authorship, using more ridicule than reason to plead Shakespeare's case. I suppose Shakespeare is as powerful a transference figure as Freud, so perhaps it's asking too much to expect a rational discussion of this matter, even from so serious a scholar as Bloom.

De Vere's claim as author of the works attributed to Shakespeare is a position "that has gathered momentum in recent years" (Niederkorn 2002). In 2000, Roger Stritmatter, as Massachusetts scholar, successfully defended a dissertation based on the premise that de Vere wrote the Shakespeare canon.... (215-16).

Waugaman is the Training and Supervising Analyst Emeritus, Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Georgetown University School of Medicine; and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland.

Excerpts from the Stritmatter dissertation are available on this site.

Added 2/12/05

The Slander Machine Just Keeps on Keepin' On

For those who like to collect colorful examples of intellectual provincialism, here's a gem: Vol. 80 of the Virginia Quarterly Review contains an article by David Kirby, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, which resurrects the old chestnut of class warfare, with a novel twist, to snub critics of the orthodox pabulum: "What makes the anti-Stratfordian view particularly repellent," opines Professor Kirby, "is its built-in snobbery, its assumption that because someone didn't get his Ph.D from an Ivy League university, he couldn't have written the plays" (186).

Kirby's hysterically offensive comment reminds us of the antidote prescribed by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends on his not understanding it."

Professor Kirby, welcome to the virtual classroom. It's not Harvard. Promise.

Added 2/11/05

Catching Our Breath

Much has happened in Authorship Studies in the months intervening since our last update to the NEWS. Over the next few weeks I'll try to catch up with events as I begin adding new updates. But perhaps it is worth beginning with the news from Germany. Walter Klier, the author of the 1994 Oxfordian study, Das Shakespeare Komplott (Steidl Verlag), has issued a revised and greatly expanded version of the book under a new title: Der Fall Shakespeare (2004, Verlag Uwe Laugwitz).

The change in title from The Shakespeare Conspiracy to The Shakespeare Affair may reflect a bow to the prevailing allergy to the term "conspiracy" among apologists for the official view of Shakespeare. Surely most Germans understand, as Shakespeare certainly did, that the world runs by Komplott of one kind or another. But the change in title also reflects a much deepened appreciation for relevant details of the case for Oxford's authorship of the Shakespearean canon, as evident not only by the one hundred pages of new material but also in the reference to contemporary scholarship which was not available to the author in 1996.

Added 10/12/04

Shakespeare Fellowship Vice-President Nominated for White Pine Award

Lynne Kositsky, the Shakespeare Fellowhip's Vice-President for Internal Communication, has been nominated for the prestigious Ontario White Pine Award for her most recent book, The Thought of High Windows, a young adult novel about the Holocaust. The book has also been optioned for an American Movie of the Week. Congratulations, Lynne!

Added 9/26/04

Boston Globe Features Authorship Question in review of Greenblatt Book

Boston Globe reviewer and Wellesley English Professor William E. Cain had some upsetting news for Stephen Greenblatt in today's today's Globe review of Will in the World. According to Cain, Greenblatt's book "is based less on hard fact than on conjecture and speculation, much of it credible and convincing, much of it not." Cain goes on to indicate that the man Greenblatt describes as the author "may not have been the man at all." Following are extended excerpts from Cain's review:

Vividly written, richly detailed, and insightful from first chapter to last, Stephen Greenblatt's fascinating biography of Shakespeare is certain to secure a place among the essential studies of the greatest of all writers. But "Will in the World" is also a disquieting book, because ultimately it is based less on hard fact than on conjecture and speculation, much of it credible and convincing, much of it not.

The materials for a Shakespeare biography are extremely limited. We have some documents, records, property transactions, and brief references to Shakespeare by his contemporaries, but not a great deal beyond that. Except for his last will and testament, there are no personal papers, no diary or letters, no manuscript of a play or poem in the author's hand. So little is concretely known that a few scholars, amateur historians, and skeptics have even made the giddy but unjustified claim that someone else---Francis Bacon, the earl of Oxford, and Queen Elizabeth are among the nominees---is the real author of Shakespeare's plays.

****************************************************************

From time to time Greenblatt makes clear that he knows he is close to giving a local habitation and a name to airy nothings, as when he considers the story that Shakespeare fled Stratford and made his way to London because he was in trouble for deer poaching. "The question," says Greenblatt, "is not the degree of evidence but rather the imaginative life that the incident has." Later, as he identifies the possible real-life figures to whom Shakespeare may be referring in the sonnets, he concedes he is "groping in the darkness of biographical speculation."

So why even attempt a biography of Shakespeare? Because we crave contact with the person whose powers of perception, representations of consciousness, and uses of language exceed those of which any mortal seems capable. But, as a person, Shakespeare is beyond our grasp. "Will in the World" is thus a wonderful work of the imagination, an engaging and risk-taking evocation of a Shakespeare who may have been the man whom Stephen Greenblatt describes but who, quite simply, may not have been that man at all.

It is curious indeed that Professor Cain should describe alternative authorship theories as "giddy and unjustified" but still conclude his review by suggesting that the man Greenblatt describes "may not have been the man at all." One cannot fail to remark that this discrepancy suggests that Dr. Cain, although honest in his evaluation of the weaknesses of Greenblatt's megabucks defense of the orthodox Shakespeare industry, has not actually troubled himself to investigate the existing evidence in favor of Oxford's authorship of the Shakespearean oeuvre or the weaknesses of the orthodox paradigm as documented, for example, in Charlton Ogburn's 1984 opus or Diana Price's Unorthodox Biography (2000).

Added 9/3/04

Stephen Greenblatt Attacks Authorship Skeptics

Stephen Greenblatt's Will In the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, just released by Norton, is the latest in a line-up of orthodox squibs which, since 1984, have attempted to put the Genie that Charlton Ogburn released back in the bottle. Greenblatt's book, however -- which sells for $7 on Ebay -- breaks new ground by being the first orthodox book to appear in print with a public attack on the "preposterous fantasy" of those who think Will wasn't Will. "The lack of...literary traces, combined with the imaginative leaps required to reconcile Shakespeare's life and work, at least partly explain the currency of theories that someone else actually work the works," opines Greenblatt. " Will in the World doesn't directly address the subject of an alternative authorship. But the process of writing the book, says Greenblatt,
"has made me respect that preposterous fantasy -- if I may say so -- rather more than when I began...because I have now taken several years of hard work and 40 years of serious academic training to grapple with the difficulty of making the connections meaningful and compelling between the life of the writer and the works that he
produced."

Congratulations, Dr. Greenblatt. Do you think you can stick your foot any deeper in your mouth?

Added 8/22/04

NYT Covers Authorship Debate at London's Globe Theatre

An August 21, 2004 article (Arts Section) by William Niederkorn covers the new policy of Globe theatre, the premiere Shakespearean performance venue in London, of supporting inquiry and debate on the authorship question. The Globe has sponsored two authorship conferences and plans to host such conferences on a regular basis. "We each have a different idea of who Shakespeare was," proclaims a Globe program. "Whoever you imagine him to be, you are most welcome here." Globe Director Mark Rylance is an authorship agnostic, critical of the orthodox view of Shakespeare but willing to consider the cases which has been made for Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and the Earl of oxford, among others. According to Neiderkorn's article, the Globe is slated to become home to a research library of 600 books on the authorship question owned b the Shakespeare Authorship Trust, the successor organization to the original Shakespeare Fellowship, founded in 1922 by Sir George Greenwood and John Thomas Looney.

Added 6/1/04

Sarah Smith, Shakespeare Fellowship member and author of Chasing Shakespeares, will lead a panel discussion that will include Richard Whalen, Shakespeare Fellowship member and author of Shakespeare: Who Was He? The panel may also include Mel Cobb, Shakespeare and Co., director of the Bankside theater project.

Cobb will discuss the way the Bankside and Rose theater projects will illuminate Shakespeare theatrics. The Rose theater project is the building of the world's first historically accurate re-creation of the Rose Playhouse in Lennox, MA. by Shakespeare & Co. . Smith will discuss the way that new advances in Shakespeare studies are changing the way we think about the Elizabethan period and may be challenging traditional thought. Whalen will then speak about Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. The evening will include refreshments and there will be books available for sale.

This event is Free and open to the Public, and would appeal to anyone who may be new to the Authorship issue as well as those more familiar. Students are especially welcome.
The library is accessible by public transportation. For location and driving directions to the Coolidge Corner Branch Library, Please visit the Coolidge website.

_________________________________________

Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew:" Two Approaches
June 22, 2004, at 7:00 p.m.
Newton Free Library, Druker Auditorium
330 Homer Street, Newton Centre, MA

Dr. Charles Berney, president emeritus of the Shakespeare Fellowship, who has written several articles for Shakespeare Matters discussing productions of Shakespeare Plays, will be giving a presentation on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. This particular play provides an especially clear-cut example of two approaches of presenting Shakespeare's plays. Through discussion and extended video clips, Dr. Berney will compare a realistic version produced by the BBC in 1980 staring John Cleese as Petruchio, with a filmed stage production based on the Italian commedia dell 'arte tradition, which is bawdy, broad and mannered. This event, cosponsored by the Shakespeare Fellowship, is free and open to the public and. All are welcome!

Directions to the Newton Free Library can be found here.